The Belmonte Jews are a community that survived in secrecy for hundreds of years by maintaining a tradition of endogamy and by hiding all the external signs of their faith. The Jewish community in the municipality of Belmonte, Cova da Beira subregion, Portugal, goes back to the 12th century and they were only discovered in 1917 by a Polish Jewish mining engineer named Samuel Schwarz. Their rich Sephardic tradition of Crypto-Judaism is unique.
Only recently did they contact other Jews and they now claim to profess Orthodox Judaism, although they still retain their centuries-old traditions.
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